Drawn and Quartered
by Valoja
Summary: The Inquisitor is having some problems with her hand and her Commander is worrying about her, so he decides to check up on her to see if he can help. Cullen x Trevelyan (OC). Song is by HIM.


Jacquelyn Trevelyan, previously just 'little Jackie' but now 'the Inquisitor' and the 'Herald of Andraste', had been a pretty regular girl before she had been forced into the role of the hero of Thedas. She still was, mind you, but now when she made a sarcastic remark, she did so most likely not because she thought something to be funny, but because she could not give herself permission to show her true feelings. Her companions might not see eye-to-eye with her because of this, but she assumed they rather have her make light of the situation as everything crumbled around her than that she burst in tears out in the open where all their followers could see her. She acted as though saving the world were the easiest thing ever, something that anybody with enough bad luck could do, because the moment she began to show that she thought that, perhaps, she couldn't do any of this after all, all of Thedas would begin to think the same. And she had heard Leliana and Cassandra and everyone else hammer on and on about how the people had to to believe that they could restore order far too often to risk such a thing. Thus, outside, before the open eye, she acted the way she truly was, but she wore that as a mask. In her private chambers, her shoulders sagged, she could actually _feel_ the bags under her eyes and she let out any emotions inside of her into her pillow. Lately, she had begun to wonder who she was, exactly. Had she changed so much without herself noticing? She didn't know.

She did know, however, that if she could not get her left hand to stop shaking so that she could write these damned reports, she would never be able to get any much-needed sleep, either. A while ago, it had started as a slight tremble. It had simply taken her a little more effort to keep her hand steady to write. Luckily, no one had ever seen her handwriting before, so they all assumed that she had always had such a shaky way of putting down letters to paper. For most other things she just used her right hand to hide the shaking of the left.

As time went by and the trembling did not subside - she had thought that her hand had to get used to the Anchor - she hid it by asking others to write down the reports she would then dictate while she did something else that called for her attention, under the guise of not having enough time to do them separately. They accepted her excuses and were none the wiser. Instead, they enjoyed helping _the_ Herald or Andraste, in whatever way that might be. Said Herald of Andraste, in the meantime, dodged the need to exercise her hand and here she sat, much later and unable to do this report by herself. She should have realised that her plan had no faults, until people had to be elsewhere and they didn't have time to help her.

By now, quite a while and many breaks, yells of anger and punches to her desk later, Jacquelyn's left hand not only sported the mark of the Anchor, but also a colourful collection of bruises on her knuckles. The report, unlike her hand, remained plain and blank, unmarked and untainted. Unlike her hand. She stared at it, frowning, and ran a hand through her auburn hair, the edges of the strands tickling her earlobes as she did so. Glancing outside, she saw it had grown dark, which meant she had sat inside for the majority of the day. Writing this report. Well that was just dandy, wasn't it? Wasting one of her precious days off with writing.

She sucked in some air before she forced her hand to grasp the quill once more and carefully dipped it into the ink, after which she began to write. She had waited too long to get this over with, now she would have get through it, whether she wanted to or not.

Halfway through the sentence, her tongue poking out through her lips in her concentration, a knock on the door interrupted the train of thought she had just been trying to put onto paper.

"Come in," she called out as she almost finished the sentence.

The door opened and Jacquelyn heard someone enter the room, though she did not look up to properly welcome her guest. At least this whole ordeal had one upside: her mother was not around to remind her of the unladylike nature of her behaviour.

"Inquis-"

Jacquelyn's head snapped up at the sound of her Commander's voice, her eyes going from his to her hand, which sat in all its trembling, bruised glory for the world to see. She had been so focussed on writing this bloody letter that she had not thought of hiding it before allowing her visitor to enter her room.

"Are you... all right?" Cullen began, eyebrows dipping down into a slight frown.

Hiding her hand behind her desk would no longer work, Jacquelyn realised. The only one in this place who could see through her facade was Cullen. He knew the importance of keeping up appearances, after all. After confessing about his lyrium addiction to her, she had felt some sort of connection between the two of them born: she knew his weakness. Perhaps he should know hers, too?

Still, going from that thought to actually following her own advice was a whole different thing. She knew how hard it must have been for him to her about his problem, but only now did she realise the extent of it all, now that she stood in the same position as him back then. Of course it did not help that his kind smile had the capability to make her heart flutter.

She opened her mouth a few times only to close it again, the words she wanted to say not planning to leave her throat, though she did not know why. He remained silent, continued to watch and wait. Knew what it felt like to come clean with something like this.

Jacquelyn had always been better with actions than words. She would rather hit someone than tell them she hated them, would rather clap someone on the shoulder than tell them that they had made you proud, would rather hug someone than tell them she liked them. _Would rather kiss someone than tell them she had fallen in love with them._ So she stopped trying to tell him and instead continued to write.

"I'm fine. What is it that you needed from me?" she asked him as she felt her cheeks flush at the sight of her own quivering hand, barely able to write out the words on the parchment.

Though she always claimed otherwise, Jacquelyn had never been a stubborn person. That meant both that she gave up a bit too easily sometimes, as portrayed by her putting off her exercises and asking others to write for her, but sometimes that also meant that she knew when to stop trying. She wouldn't be giving up now, she would just ask for help, in her own curious way; she knew that she couldn't carry on much longer, pretending that everything was fine, and she knew she couldn't get out of this mess by herself. She just had to hope that Cullen saw through all of this without her having to say a word, for then she would falter.

And he did. He could see more than he let on, often chose not to act on what he knew because it might seem as prodding to some people. Luckily, a talent that came with this one seemed to be knowing when stepping up could be considered as 'sticking his nose in places where it didn't belong' and when he would actually be helping the person in question. He had noticed the trouble the Inquisitor seemed to be having with her surroundings, but had kept it to himself. Now he had been given permission to act.

"We have not seen you all day, your Worship. We were beginning to wonder whether something had happened. Have you been in here all this time?" Cullen asked as he took a few steps towards the desk, his eyes leaving Jacquelyn's hand and once more finding her bright brown eyes, staring at him with a silent plea hidden inside.

"Yes. I apologise for any trouble I may have caused with my unexpected absence..." the Inquisitor began, but Cullen silenced whatever else she had wanted to say by moving next to her.

The warmth that his body emitted found its way through his armour and her garments, eliciting a shudder from her. Only then did she realise that the fire in her hearth had died out long ago since she had neglected it and never rekindled the flames. She had been so busy that she hadn't felt the slight tremors running down through her from the cold.

As if sensing this, too, the man standing next to her bent his large frame over her smaller one, his left hand reaching for hers. Before he touched her, without looking at her, he asked, "May I?"

"Uh, yes," Jacquelyn stammered, her cheeks flushing at the close proximity with the Commander, not quite sure what he planned on doing.

With gentle motions, Cullen placed his fingers around hers, its trembling subsiding as he took over its duty. Jacquelyn stared at their entwined digits in wonder; she hadn't known that the Commander, too, used his left hand for such things. Though his sword hung at his left hip, which must have meant that he had learned to use both his hands. She took no note of the practised ease with which he finished her report for her, having written many of his own as well. Filling most of his days with them, in fact.

When he released her hand again, Jacquelyn held it to her chest as if to cherish his fingerprints on her skin. Having forgotten what they had been doing in the first place, she glanced at the finished piece of writing on her desk, her cheeks growing red again. "Thank you."

Cullen hummed in response as he straightened his back and moved to her other side. The Inquisitor thought that he would leave her again, but he surprised her by clearing a spot on the desk and planting himself there. With a frown on his face, he looked down at his leader and took in the rather haggard look she sported.

"Are you truly all right?" He did not like the tired expression on her face, or the bruises already forming on her knuckles, or the slouch in her posture. He wanted to pull her to bed with him, to kiss the colourations on her hand away, to make sure she got some much needed rest.

She averted her eyes when she felt like her heart had begun to beat in her throat, her voice temporarily leaving her. "I..." she began, but finding that she once again couldn't find the words she needed, she let a sigh and, resting her elbows on the wood of her desk, hid her face in her hands. "You should already know the answer to that."

The sound of armour clinking filled the air as Jacquelyn presumed that Cullen changed position, followed by his heavy footfalls as he moved farther away from her. For a moment she wondered whether he would just leave, forgetting that her Commander had never been and would never be the kind of person who left someone who had just lowered their guard like this without a word.

All of a sudden, a pair of fingers had wormed their way between her wrists, taking hold of her chin and pulling her face from her hands. Brown eyes stared into her darker ones, the confidence which had been in them only a moment ago disappearing when she looked back. He glanced away again and struggled to come up with a coherent excuse for his actions, though by then Jacquelyn's mind had already shut itself down and she pushed herself up from her seat. Her back screamed in agony, but she ignored it as she leaned over the desk and pressed her lips against his.

His reaction was immediate, his arms circling around her even with the distance of the desk standing between the two, for which he would be thankful later. While in that moment he wanted nothing more than to pull her against him, leaving not a bit of space between the two bodies, that probably wouldn't have gotten the wanted response.

The kiss remained superficial, though Jacquelyn could not help herself when she traced her tongue across his thin scar. Still, the action had filled her with a warmth she hadn't felt often, and it had left her wanting more.

When they parted, both the Inquisitor and her Commander had flushed faces, their eyes suddenly finding everything in the room but each other interesting. Cullen reached up to scratch the back of his head while Jacquelyn pulled at the hem of her shirt, wondering whether she had just made a mistake.

"I think that, perhaps, I should come up here and help you with your reports more often," he said in the end, a small smile finding its way to his lips. "And, you know, to help you with your hand. It will not be beneficial for anybody if you cannot control your hand enough for things such as writing."

Relief filled Jacquelyn at his answer, and for the first time in ages she felt like herself again, her grin the first genuine one in far too long. "Yes, I think I would like that."

Maybe things wouldn't be so bad after all.


End file.
